KATHERINE TAULMAN VAUGHAN (Kathy) is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, born many years after Sherman’s appalling march to the sea.
An English major at Stratford Junior College in Virginia, she transferred to the University of Georgia to study Journalism. More recently she attended the Iowa School of Writing’s summer workshop where she studied fiction and Faulkner. It was there she discovered that she wasn’t a literary writer at all. Nope, instead, she created a new genre: Conversational Writing. In other words, there’s no flowery language, no hidden meaning, no esoteric philosophy. She writes like she talks.
She first married a man so young he couldn’t buy liquor but was eligible to go to war until the army recruiters realized he couldn’t identify Vietnam on a map. They had two children.
Divorced after ten years of marriage, Kathy married Lewis Grizzard. A beloved Southern humorist and syndicated newspaper columnist, it was Lewis that encouraged Kathy to resurrect her love of writing. Although they shared that mutual interest, Lewis’ work interfered with his role as stepfather. Already rocky, the marriage became more so when Kathy’s six-year-old daughter asked Lewis if he was a girl after he came home wearing a puka bead necklace he picked up at Rite-Aid. Sadly, that coupled with recurring bouts of the booze flu, brought an end to their connubial state. They realized they fought a lot better as friends than spouses.
After the rather public divorce, the ex-Mrs. Grizzard felt compelled to leave home and introduce her children to another part of the country. Yellowstone Park seduced her, and she married a kind man who was manager of a guest ranch near Livingston, Montana. Her husband proved to be a wonderful stepfather who introduced Kathy and her citified children to a life of adventure and an appreciation of Big Sky country.
While living in the West, Kathy received a call from Lewis and an editor at Peachtree Publishers. They asked her to write a book about life in the south married to a good ole’ boy like Lewis. It was entitled How to Tame a Wild Bore which was followed by From Debutante to Doublewide. The latter is a spine-tingling account of a southern belle plucked from the Land o’ Cotton and planted in a cowboy town with more bars than churches.
Many opportunities arose during the fifteen years in Montana and later Wyoming. She wrote a weekly newspaper for the Livingston Enterprise and produced a radio show called A Closer Look From Schmook. Note: she never found humor in the relentless digs she received being called a Schmuck. For seven years she worked as a production assistant for Bon Appetit magazine and later served as a location scout on Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer. Moving to Cody, Wyoming, she worked at an exclusive guest ranch as an event planner, also in charge of marketing.
She returned to the South in 1995, alone, answering the call of sweet-smelling grits trees that came to her in dreams. Alas, the same feeling was not shared by her Montana man, so yet another catch and release episode transpired, and it had nothing to do with fish.
After arriving in Atlanta, Kathy moved to Palm Beach, Florida at the request of her divorced and floundering father. After living in jeans and manure covered boots, Kathy’s relocation was like moving inside a pinball machine.
Now a native of West Palm Beach, Kathy enjoys Mounts Botanical Garden, where she wrote a gardening column called “Contrary Mary.” In the summers, she, her husband of twenty-three years and Tinkerbell (an aging teacup Pomeranian that bites) sneak off to the mountains of North Carolina. It is there she indulges her passion for flowers.
Raine’s story is Kathy’s first fiction, and she is currently finishing the screenplay of a film by the same name.